darkemeralds. My Rothko walls, part 2

Turns out the color-meshing technique of wall painting is amazingly fast and easy.

Prep work is demanding because paint goes everywhere, and absolutely everything--floor, ceiling, trim, furniture--has to be masked and draped and taped off.

Cleanup is like any other latex-paint cleanup, multiplied by the number of cans of paint you're using. But there's only one brush and one lambs-wool pad. No rollers, no trays.

So while there were four hours of prep and cleanup, I only spent 45 minutes applying paint, and there's no second coat. It's a one-shot deal.

Living room wall painted in a black-like combination of many dark colors, with a pot of peach tulips on a table in front of it.

Six cans of paint in various deep shades

The colors I used

I sent a photo of my test section to my brother the artist, and he wrote back, "That's quite a color! In painting, black paint rarely ever works. It's too....black? Dead? I don't know, but when black is called for it's usually a mixture much like you have. One of the best "blacks" is alizarin crimson and thalo green. Deep and alive."

I was pleased to note that I'd intuited my way to just that: my red is very close to alizarin crimson and my green is in the thalo family.

I got about a quarter of the room done over the weekend, and I think I can finish in another big push.